A deputy speaker of the Home of Lords, Ruth Henig, who has died aged 80, mixed a profitable profession as a distinguished educational, a printed historian and a long-term Lancashire county councillor earlier than shifting on to the nationwide stage when created a Labour life peer in 2004.
A former Justice of the Peace and an skilled on prison justice, she spent the following twenty years at Westminster looking for to safe better public safety via enhancing the regulation of the burgeoning non-public safety trade.
Henig was a profoundly dedicated public servant whose life traces had been laid down by twentieth century European historical past. She made this her specialised examine, each as a college lecturer and because the creator of a spread of books on the origin and affect of the 2 world wars.
Her Jewish mother and father, Kurt Munzer and Elfriede Gurtz, each fled Nazi Germany for Holland, the place they met and married in Enschede in 1939, earlier than making a dramatic escape to the UK in a small open lifeboat in Could 1940 because the German invasion of the Netherlands started. They had been initially interned on the Isle of Man, the place their first daughter was born, however had been launched as “pleasant aliens” in 1942, having secured work in Leicester. Kurt turned a bookkeeper and his spouse was a photographer.
Their second daughter, Ruth, named after Elfriede’s youthful sister who died at Auschwitz, was born in Leicester. None of their kinfolk survived, other than two of Kurt’s cousins, who got here to the UK on a kindertransport. “My curiosity in historical past was there from an early age, however my curiosity in trendy European historical past was stimulated by my mother and father’ expertise,” Henig would recall. She devoted Origins of the Second World Conflict, printed in 1985, to her grandparents and paid tribute to her mother and father’ recollections for serving to profit her 1998 ebook The Weimar Republic.
Ruth went to Wyggeston women’ grammar college, Leicester, and graduated from Bedford Faculty, London, with a first-class diploma in historical past in 1965. The next yr she joined Lancaster College as a postgraduate pupil and married the tutorial Stanley Henig, who had established the division of politics on the establishment when it was based two years earlier. Each households got here from Leicester, the place the couple had been married 4 days earlier than the snap common election at which Stanley was returned because the Labour MP for Lancaster.
Ruth Henig turned an assistant lecturer in historical past in 1968, then senior lecturer, a publish she held till her college retirement in 2004. She was awarded a PhD in 1978, headed the historical past division for 2 years from 1995 after which turned dean of arts and humanities till 2000.
Throughout this era she additionally printed her first ebook, The League of Nations, in 1973. This was adopted by Versailles and After, in 1984, and Origins of the First World Conflict in 1989. She additionally co-authored Girls and Political Energy: Europe Since 1945 (2001) along with her son Simon Henig and in 2010 printed A Historical past of the League of Nations (revised as The Peace That By no means Was, 2019).
She was a devoted Lancastrian. She sat on Lancashire county council for greater than twenty years (1981-2005) because the Labour member for Lancaster East, chairing the council in 1999-2000. She was chair of governors of Lancaster Grownup Faculty (1981-91) and of Central Lancaster highschool (1987-95). She chaired the board of the Duke’s Playhouse from 1987 to 1995 and was lively in quite a few different neighborhood roles.
After her husband misplaced the Lancaster parliamentary seat in 1970, she stood twice because the Labour candidate, in 1979 and 1992, coming inside 3,000 votes of successful on the second event. All through her life she was an envoy for the event of her adopted metropolis. She was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Lancashire in 2002.
She was made CBE in 2000 for companies to policing. A justice of the peace in Lancaster from 1984 to 2005, she chaired the Lancashire Police Authority from 1995 to 2005 and the Affiliation of Police Authorities (of which she turned president) from 1997 to 2005. She was at one time a member of the fee on the longer term policing of England and Wales and a member of the Nationwide Prison Justice Board (2003-05).
After becoming a member of the Home of Lords in 2004, she was appointed in 2006 by the then house secretary, John Reid, as chair of the Safety Trade Authority, the non-public safety regulatory physique, a publish she retained till 2013. She labored all through this era in attempting to construct public belief and confidence within the safety trade, a topic she addressed within the debate on the king’s speech final autumn. She additionally sought to empower girls working within the sector.
As a member of the Lords, she served on the EU exterior affairs committee (2012-15) and the EU committee (2014-15). She was a member of the joint committee on nationwide safety technique from 2018 and of the justice and residential affairs committee from 2023. She was made a deputy speaker in 2018.
Henig had a variety of leisure pursuits – together with strolling and many years of assist for Leicester soccer membership – however was notably famend as an ace bridge participant. She had performed solo whist at college, however developed a ardour for bridge thereafter. She performed for Lancashire from the early Nineteen Nineties, captained the Home of Lords’ bridge group and chaired the all-party bridge group.
She and Stanley divorced in 1993, and the next yr she married Jack Johnstone, her bridge accomplice for the earlier decade. He died in 2013. She is survived by the 2 sons of her first marriage, Simon and David.
